Paula was born 31 December 1918 in Lublin, Poland in a traditional Jewish family. Her father was a furniture designer and her mother’s family owned an edible oil-processing factory.
Her parents and all her family except one brother perished in Majdanek and Belzec concentration camps.
She had two brothers. The elder, Theodor (Thadek) Kleinman became a distinguished violinist, “Summa Cum Laude” laureate of the Warsaw Music Academy. He left Poland before the Second World War, gave concerts in Italy and Germany and settled in Basel, Switzerland where he held a position with the Basel Philharmonic Orchestra. Thanks to his tireless efforts he got Paula a visa to Switzerland in 1946, after the war.
Her younger brother, Hershel Yekutiel Kleinman was a member of the Jewish partisans and was assassinated by the Poles at the age of eighteen years.
Her father, very enlightened and modern for those times, sent her to study for the Baccalaureate and for further studies at the Warsaw University. She was a bright, intelligent student, a blond and blue-eyed young woman. She started her studies in 1936: philosophy, German and Polish languages and literatures, German History. The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 prevented her from finishing her last exam. Returning to Lublin, she was sent with her family in the Lublin ghetto.
In April 18, 1942 she was transferred with the surviving members of her family to Majdan Tatarski. In June 1942 she was separated from her parents and sent to Majdanek concentration camp. Her aparents were assassinated there approximately in November 1942 and March 1943. They were about 50 years old. She was sent to Laskiewitz (part of Majdanek ) and then to Majdanek.
She was sent to a seamstress/tailoring workshop, sewing and repairing Nazi uniforms, when she miraculously succeeded to run away. She hid in an attic at nearby peasants’ barn. Later they told the Nazi Police they had not seen or heard anything, though they provided her with clothes and food.
She managed to flee to Warsaw – helped by Polish friends who hid her in their car while providing her with food. In Warsaw she met by chance (or by God's hand) on Christmas Eve, in a tramway, her brother’s friend the sculptor Adam Procki * who saved her life. He helped her acquire forged identity documents, get a job and – most important – taught her the Catholic Faith and the Gospels perfectly well. Thus nobody could prove she was a Jewess.
Thus she was living as a Catholic Pole in Warsaw outside the Ghetto. She saw the Ghetto burning in 1943 and the destruction and death of all its inhabitants. A year later there was the Bor Komorovsky uprising, in 1944. This mostly unsuccessful uprising ended in a bloodbath. Warsaw was bombed, totally destroyed and its inhabitants assassinated. She was driven out, together with the martyr city’s survivors– as she calls this beloved city in her manuscript - in a Death March. Wounded and sick she fell on the ground and was rescued by Red Cross female workers. They took care of her and sent her to the countryside, to recover from her ordeal.
The whole area was liberated by the Russian troops, advancing towards the receding Nazi army. Returning to Lublin, Paula was faced with the bitter tragedy – none of her numerous relatives in Poland, about eighty people, had survived. She decided to leave Poland. Through International Red Cross broadcasts she managed to get in touch with her brother Theodor in Switzerland. She received a visa for health rehabilitation. She was malnourished and had tuberculosis.
Thus after overcoming countless difficulties she arrived in Basel, Switzerland beginning of 1946 with her meager belongings, the clothes she was wearing and a small cardboard suitcase containing a few photos and documents…..
Fate brought her to Geneva, where she decided to finish her studies – she had promised her late father never to give up. She successfully obtained her Translator-Interpreter Diploma in German, Polish, Russian and French at the famous Geneva International School of Translation-Interpretation. She was helped financially by a generous anonymous benefactor **.
Then Paula decided to start a new life, to get married and to have a child – after so much tragedy and death, to bring a new life, to redeem all the innocent members of her family gone into ashes. Through common friends she met Maurice Fradkoff, a Swiss Jewish gentleman from a well established family in Geneva.
They fell in love and got married in March 1948.
Unfortunately Paula became seriously ill few months after her wedding – the aftermath of the tragic years when she fought non-stop for her life under inhuman circumstances. She suffered a total nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized for about a year. A very religious Jew, while not being overly observant, she managed to overcome and recover from her illness. She was sure the Almighty God had saved her life, at several occasions, in order for her to live: to succeed to lead a “normal” family life.
On 12 October 1950 Paula gave birth to her only daughter Evelyne Denise Fradkoff (in Yiddish Havele Dinele). Havele, in remembrance to her beloved aunt Hava, Dinele in remembrance to her cousin Dina, (Dina is on the picture showing all her cousins, little children in 1939, all gassed at the Belzec Concentration camp).
Paula loved studying and returned to the University of Geneva in the seventies, obtaining a B.A. in History, French and German languages and literatures. Her Warsaw studies were recognized by the University’s authorities.
Paula Fradkoff wrote a book, a historical novel relating life in Warsaw during the fateful Bor Komorovsky uprising. The book’s title is “To die for Warsaw” and the sub-title is “Fugit Amor” (in Latin "And love disappeared…").
The theme reflects the disappearance of human love/care/respect during these tragic times. She researched historic facts and descriptions in archives and documents during 12-15 years, from the UN and the Paris Libraries among others. She already had her novel in mind much before, as many drafts from the fifties were found in her files. The manuscript is in French, with many quotations in Polish, Latin, Yiddish, German and Russian.
* Adam Procki became very well known in Poland. We wanted to honor him as a Righteous Among the Nations, but he passed away without children. We have the correspondence between him and Paula in the eighties.
** He was an elderly gentleman, Mr. Neuman. Later he took her to the Chuppah when she married, as she had no parents to accompany her under the nuptial canopy. We still have his wedding present, it’s a tea service from Nyon, very rare and valuable. His daughter was also in the Jewish old-age home the Marronniers where Paula was and was very friendly with her.